What can influence the interruption or cut-off of playback from the music player software?

[Gilberto 62]

Hello everyone. For years, I've been playing my music from an external hard drive or from a folder on my PC through Foobar or HQPlayer, then to the DAC, and then to the amplifier. I always upsample all my files to DSD512 using the software for those two aforementioned players. Obviously, this process is cumbersome and very demanding, so as you know, it requires powerful PC hardware because, otherwise, interruptions or dropouts in music listening are frequent. My PC, while waiting for a new and more capable one, a ten-year-old i7, is working at full speed with this processing and is smoking, to say the least. The curious thing is that I've observed for a long time now that on holidays, Sundays, or holidays, I have virtually no dropouts or dropouts in my listening, although these are more frequent on regular days. This is very curious and strange to me, since I don't use any kind of transmitter, router, or anything like that for playback. The playback is via an external or internal hard drive/Foobar or HQp/Dac, so the higher or lower internet load has no effect on this. So, what could it be...? Power consumption...? I don't know, but if anyone has an opinion, I'd be interested in reading it. Thanks, and best regards, everyone...

 

[theveterans]

Are you using NAA or just direct from PC using USB?

Could also be Intel Speed Step or Turbo Boost causing dropouts. I would just turn those two off and let the CPU run at its overclocked frequency say 4.5 GHz 100% of the time. It's gonna get hotter on idle and but it'll cure the dropouts provided your thermal cooling is still excellent

On newer MOBOs, there's a USB setting that literally injects random jitter to increase the frequency bandwidth and allow for maximum bandwidth. While it's great for file transfers, it's detrimental to USB audio

 

[2leftears]

Maybe check if your PC is running some other background tasks that it only schedules on working days?

Does this still happen if you disconnect the PC from the router?

 

[Gilberto 62]

Theveterans, I have the power output set to maximum in "power options" and "suspend to USB power" disabled. How do I disable "Turbo Boost"...?
2Leftears, it seems to me, though I haven't studied it in depth, that if I turn off the router, there seem to be fewer outages or dropouts.
Please don't forget that this PC of mine is old (i7 14400...) and not ideal for this DSD512 upsampling issue...

 

[theveterans]

Theveterans, I have the power output set to maximum in "power options" and "suspend to USB power" disabled. How do I disable "Turbo Boost"...?
2Leftears, it seems to me, though I haven't studied it in depth, that if I turn off the router, there seem to be fewer outages or dropouts.
Please don't forget that this PC of mine is old (i7 14400...) and not ideal for this DSD512 upsampling issue...

You need to go to BIOS for those settings. i7 14400 isn't that old. I'm still rocking a dual core intel core 7660U gen laptop (Surface Pro 2017) hehe, but I don't use HQPlayer since my DAC is only limited to 192 KHz. I use Diretta protocol instead.

Anyways, you would need to also turn off anything related to "spread spectrum" on your BIOS settings to minimize dropouts as much as possible

 

[dunring]

Two things I'd do. Check USB ports and hubs in device manager and uncheck the power management boxes on them. Also try playback in exclusive mode so it switches to the bit rate for each track since upsampling degrades the sound quality of the original. Try a volume matched comparison with familiar tracks.